Transitional Year Program provides WVU ophthalmology residents with crucial skills ahead of specialized training
As he prepares to wrap up his first year of medical residency in the Transitional Year Residency Program and advance to an ophthalmology residency in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Omar Sadat, M.D., said his experiences through the program have added some crucial tools to his toolbelt for his next three years of specialized training.
The Transitional Year Residency Program at the West Virginia University School of Medicine is a one-year, ACGME-accredited program for first-year residents at associated WVU programs that provides a strong foundation in clinical education through rotations across several areas of medicine.
Dr. Sadat explained that first-year ophthalmology residents at WVU are required to complete their first year of training in the Transitional Year Program, where they spend three months of the year on ophthalmology rotations and nine months on rotations spanning a variety of medical specialties such as emergency medicine, pediatrics and plastic surgery.
Sadat said he has already learned a lot through this program that will easily carry over into his next three years of ophthalmology training, including properly utilizing electronic medical records, submitting orders and general patient assessment tips. He added that the operating room experiences through his plastic surgery rotation were especially beneficial, as it allowed him to practice and learn more about suturing, a common technique utilized by ophthalmologists for various ocular procedures.
Sadat said the hands-on training experiences across various specialties not only taught him several valuable skills but also provided him with some new perspectives on medicine.
“As physicians, each of us will eventually choose to specialize in a certain field, with some opting to narrow that scope even further by exploring a subspecialty,” Sadat explained. “Thanks to the transitional year, we as young physicians get a chance to not only see what our peers in other fields experience, but we get to experience the reality of that field for ourselves right along with them. It allows you to see medicine in a whole new way.”
Through these various rotations, Sadat said he worked with several different patient populations, including children through pediatrics rotations, critically ill patients through ICU rotations and veteran patients through an outpatient rotation at a local veterans’ facility. He said he is grateful to the program for exposing him to so much during his first year of residency.
“Because of the various rotations that we do through the Transitional Year Program, we have the benefit of being exposed to such a wide breadth of patient populations and medical conditions prior to beginning our specialized training,” Sadat said. “Those experiences help us as residents to build our skillsets and become more confident and independent physicians.”
In July, Sadat will conclude his year in the Transitional Year Residency Program and begin the next three years of his ophthalmology training as a full-time resident in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Residency Program.
To learn more about the Transitional Year Residency Program, visit medicine.hsc.wvu.edu/medical-education/transitional-year.
To learn more about the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Residency Program, visit medicine.hsc.wvu.edu/eye/residents.